Friday, 25 July 2014

Friday Research: Trick Of Letting Customer Get All Lovey-Dovey With Your Product

When Will You Use This?

Planning product launches and promotional campaigns.

What’s The Red-Letter Bite Today?

Theodore: I've never loved anyone the way I loved you.
Samantha: Me too.Now we know how.

This quote from the movie Her (2013) wouldn't sound odd until we knew that this dialogue actually happens between a real man and his operating system Samantha. And maybe even then it's not so weird afterall, in today's lonely world people start bonding with various products on deeper and deeper levels.

Current research* suggests an idea that people might be “bonding” with products without even realizing it, and examines whether physically interacting with products in an affectionate manner (e.g. hugging, stroking) might lead people to grow attached to those products.

This research finds that when people performed the affectionate gestures, they grew more attached to the products, and accordingly liked the products more and were more willing to buy them. Authors note that "this was only the case when the designated product had some visual human-like traits (e.g. a human face on the packaging). That’s because affectionate gestures like hugs are usually reserved for human-to-human interactions, and thus the products must be somewhat humanlike for the gesture to result in affectionate feelings." Also, lonely people were even more likely to get attached to a specific product in consequence of performing an affectionate gesture towards it.